The Favorites: A Novel(117)

I shook my head. Aside from my injured foot, I felt fine. Normal. But I’d only taken two pills, and none since last night. Whatever the stuff in that bottle was, Heath had far more in his system than I did.

“We should withdraw, right?” he said. “Even if we win, we lose. So what’s the point?”

Withdrawing was the smart move. But it meant all our hard work over the past year was for nothing. Our careers would end with a whimper instead of a bang, and we would never know whether or not we could have won. And what if I was wrong? The pills could have been placebos. Or I could’ve simply spun myself into a paranoid frenzy over nothing.

I swept my eyes over the graveyard. It reminded me so much of the family plot back home—a sliver of raw, rough nature in the midst of all this shiny newness. Sacred ground not even the global machine of the Olympic Games could bulldoze into submission. It had been there for a century already, and it would survive long after we were all bones in the dirt.

“We can’t quit. Not now.” I held out my hand. “What do you say?”

“I say…” He smiled and interlaced his fingers with mine. “I’m skating with Katarina Shaw, and there’s nothing she can’t do.”

“We’re Shaw and Rocha,” I said. “And there’s nothing we can’t do. Together.”





Kirk Lockwood: They stepped onto the ice, and everyone in the Iceberg Skating Palace held their breath. Myself included.

Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha take their opening positions for the free dance at the 2014 Winter Olympics. They don’t smile up at the crowd. They’re focused solely on each other.

Ellis Dean: Remember, no one had seen this updated program before.

Inez Acton: Taylor Swift! Fucking iconic. Too many people sleep on “The Last Time,” but real Swifties know it’s a total bop. My girls and I were ready to sing along.

Nicole Bradford: My husband and I watched live. It was incredible seeing how far they’d come, from little kids clomping around the ice to Olympic superstars.

Veronika Volkova: Yelena and Dmitri left the door wide open for both American teams. I have no idea what had gotten into that girl; it was as if she wanted to fail.

Garrett Lin: Gaskell and Kovalenko were sitting in first place, Volkova and Kipriyanov in second. If Kat and Heath skated well, the gold was theirs for the taking.

Francesca Gaskell: We’d done everything we could. All any of us could do was wait.

Closeup of Katarina and Heath staring into each other’s eyes right before their music begins. A reverent hush has fallen over the stands.

Garrett Lin: This was it. Four minutes, and it would all be over.





Chapter 82





Our music was about heartbreak, but that’s the last thing I felt as Heath and I skated.

We’d created most of the program’s choreography ourselves during those long winter days in Boston, and so it was perfectly suited to us, each element a knife’s-edge balance between tenderness and power.

Searing eye contact as we slowly circled each other during the darkly romantic piano intro. Legs pumping in time with the vigorous bow strokes of the strings, while Heath cupped my chin with whisper-soft hands. Pressure building as the song pulled back to only vocals and a violin tremolo, and we launched into a lift that peaked along with the orchestration.

That free dance was the story of us: Heath and me, spinning away from each other one second, only to clutch each other close the next. Never still, never simple, always pushing and pulling, shattering each other and putting the pieces back together again.

We were adults, and we were children, and we were skating at the Olympics and also on the frozen lake back home, laughing and twirling and holding each other tight. It felt like flying and falling and being caught, all in the same instant.

It felt like seconds and hours and years, and then we were finished. The music still vibrated in my bones, and Heath pressed his forehead to mine, and I could think of only one thing that might make the exquisite moment even better.

So I did what I had stopped myself from doing the night before.

I kissed him.





Ellis Dean: The whole crowd was on its feet. Even the Russian fans.

Garrett Lin: Bella and I were screaming, crying, hugging each other—until I told her to settle down before her heart rate got too high, and she hurled a pillow at my head.

Inez Acton: Watching at home, you could feel the energy in that arena. It was electric.

Francesca Gaskell: I didn’t watch. I couldn’t watch.

Nicole Bradford: I wish I could have been there. I can only imagine how thrilling it must have been in person. I was so proud of them.

Jane Currer: Shaw and Rocha could be arrogant, inconsistent, insubordinate, outright reckless. But when they were on, they were on. And that night, they were flawless.

Veronika Volkova: The scores had not even come through yet, and everyone was acting as if they had already won. The Olympics are not a popularity contest.

Garrett Lin: They’d done it. They’d really done it. When they kissed, I thought…well, I won’t pretend to understand Bella’s relationship with Heath, but I thought she might be upset. She wasn’t. She never stopped smiling.

Kirk Lockwood: We didn’t need to see the scores. We were all certain—one hundred percent, no doubt in our minds certain—Shaw and Rocha would be the Olympic champions.